


The Girl Through The Window

by nevergonnawin



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, Love Story, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Underage Smoking, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 11:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11289678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevergonnawin/pseuds/nevergonnawin
Summary: "I fell in love one evening when Ilya was particularly sad.It had happened before – nights where she sad, and I would stay beside her, playing with the end of her hair, as she talked about her family or her heart or whatever had happened to make her sad – but this time, she did not want to talk. I watched as she grabbed cigarettes after cigarettes, hands shaking."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting an orginal fiction. Please note that English is not my native language and that there may be some (many) mistakes. 
> 
> I hope you will love my story as much as I loved writing it.

I have seen a lot of adventures, you know, would they be true or imaginary. I have spent my time reading them, from Peter Pan's wonderful stories to the newspapers lying on my father's desk. I have dreamt about some, wrote some, and I even lived some. But my favourite adventure of all is, by far, the one which led me to write today.

You see, it is very well known that rumours fly quickly, especially in my neighbourhood. Rumours are what keep the people excited, at times where nothing is exciting. And gossiping is the key to a good life, would say my grandmother. This is how you learn what to do and what not to do. And gossips are how I first heard about the main character of our story – or shall I start calling it an adventure? After all, there are no greater adventures than life.

Ilya's adventure was one of the greatest adventures of all, the kind of adventures that you tell to your children and that they'll tell to their children, and so on. It is one of those stories that never die, the kind you want to hear about every evening before going to bed. The kind that you'll always remember like the back of your hand.

It also the kind of adventures, I am afraid, that does not happen like the ones in books. And I would know, because I saw it first-hand. That is why I shall tell you the whole story from the day it started to the day it all ended. Because there is always a day where everything starts and a day where everything ends. Adventures always have an end, or else they wouldn't be adventures as such.

Listen carefully, then. This is the adventure of the girl through the window.


	2. Chapter 2

There is a window in the west side of my school that shows practically nothing but buildings. There is a bit of grass and a tree, but mostly it just used to be a spot for people to go smoking during breaks. Used to be, because during my second year of high school, and because of construction work, this part of the school was closed off, and since then the usual smoking spot has moved. But from that window, in the west side of my school, you could still see what was happening in there. Just because the place is closed off doesn't mean nothing happens through the window. And just because the west side of my school is a little in ruin doesn't mean nobody gets to look through it. And that's how our story starts. Through the window.

 

-

 

There is nothing I like more than to sit at this window and look at what's there. Typically, there is nothing. But this emptiness brings me a kind of melancholy that I don't want to let go of. There is always a sense of happiness when you look at something empty. A thought, at the back of your head, going, “ _Oh. I'm not as empty as this. How lucky am I._ ”

It's a way to feel better about your own life. But let me be true to you, my reader, and hear me when I say that this is only for a while. It will disappear soon enough and you'll be left with your judgment and own emptiness. You'll just stare at this window until _I'm not empty_ turns into _I'm not so different from what I see there_.

 But this is getting sad and this adventure is not a sad one.

 As I told you before, this story does not totally go the way they do in books. I wish I could tell you that everything I am about to say is real, when in reality, a part of it is just a fragment of my imagination. I do realise, though, as I write this down, that just because I imagined it doesn't mean it's not true. There is always a part of true in one's imagination. And I know, for one, that Ilya was real. She became real the day I first heard about her and she was still real as I watched her live through that window. She became even more real the day we started to live this adventure together. The day _the girl through the window_ became _my adventure_.

 I am sure your mother has always warned you about _those people_ that you should really not hang out with, and that you should, _under no circumstance whatsoever_ , never become. _Those people_ with a bad reputation, the kind of people who like to hang out at night doing God knows what – smoking, fighting, having dangerous hobbies and overall just _living_. Because what people are most scared of is just plain _living_ life as they want to. And Ilya was doing just that. She was living.

 Ilya was always the protagonist of the most random stories. One day she was the mistress of a Carmel chef. The other she was pregnant with her third kid at the age of eighteen. Then, the next, she was smoking _other things than cigarettes_ and then suddenly she was summoning Satan with her weird friends. However, those are just a portion of the stories I heard about Ilya and her scary ways of life. Truth be told, reader, none of those stories were true. But I must say that if my story has a chance of being real, then so do these stories. The only thing different from my story is who they come from – and those rumours definitely do _not_ come from your dearest narrator.

 Ilya, eighteen, was the daughter of a good-to-nothing father and an always-drunk mother, born to bring money in the household. She grew up teaching herself how to live, trying not to reproduce her mother's habits and her father's mistakes. She grew up strong and tough, and that's something nobody likes to see. People like to see failure where it should be. It displeases them dearly when things are not the way they should be. And Ilya was definitely not the way she should've been. She had to learn how to take care of herself – something most adults learn after the age of thirty – and how to get through life in one piece.

 The first time I saw her through that window, our main character was not alone. She was there with what I made up to be her boyfriend – who appeared, after some time, to really be her boyfriend –, though he could've been a close relative or just a plain, normal friend. But the story starts with my mind making him up as his boyfriend, so that's what he will be for our story.

 Her boyfriend, as I was saying, was sitting next to her, back pressed to the wall as he smoked a cigarette and listened to her talking.

 “She came home drunk again,” she might have been saying, “and I had to help her _again_ to walk up the stairs.”

 He felt sorry for her. It showed all over his face, from the pout of his mouth to the frown of his eyebrows. He didn't open his mouth, though, so I guess he just wanted her to let whatever she was feeling out. And in my imaginary world, what she was feeling was grief and sadness for that mother of hers that didn't care to come home drunk and let herself be carried by her daughter. Ilya shook her head, stopped for a while, then started talking again, looking annoyed with herself.

 “I don't want to talk about it anymore,” I believe she said in a soft voice. “I'm sorry I always talk about her when we're together.”

 He rubbed her back softly. She seemed to calm down a little, as her shoulders seemed less tense all of a sudden and a small smile appeared on her face. From where I was sitting, up in that building, I could barely see it, but there it was, lighting her face a bit. Her curly hair was falling around her face in a elegant way that only girls can pull off. She looked at him fondly. He looked back the same way. It felt private, and all of a sudden I wanted to stop watching. I did not, though. Or else there would be no story.

 She sighed, content. “I wish we could stay that way forever,” she whispered – or I dream she did. “I only feel at easy when you're here. I wish you would stay with me always.”

 She talked like she was high, and maybe she was – but he never stopped looking at her fondly, and you could feel the love he felt for her from miles away. Or so I thought, really. The rest of the story would soon prove me wrong, but at that exact moment – _oh_ how I wish I had been right.

 It was a beautiful night for a beautiful girl. The sky was orange and yellow and pink and blue, bright and calm, as if to cheer Ilya up. I would not be surprised if it was told that the sky and the earth were alive for that girl. As if the stars had been created to take care of her. But she did not care at the moment – although she would later on, when her life would come to that deep hole we call hell, when everyone around her would fail her; she would look up at the sky and thank God it was alive for her –, all she cared about was the arms of her boyfriend surrounding her and the warmth he spread towards her. She bathed in his scent for a second, loosing herself.

 “It's us against the world,” he whispered in her ear, and Lord knows I wish he was saying the truth. Gods above know I wish his love was stronger than storms and bigger than the sky, but it was not and that is the sad truth.

They stayed like that for a while, and when they had to part ways, he kissed her forehead and wished her to be strong. He also said he loved her, but you and I both know, now, that he did not fully mean it.

 

-

 

Ilya came to know that truth a few days later. Looking through the window, I watched as she punched a wall, crying. The tears were big and fat on here small face, shining as the light of the descending sun hit them. She looked like a goddess – an angry goddess, one that was hurt in so many ways it had to be illegal. Her high cheekbones were high-lighted by the tears in a kind of morbid way. She was still beautiful, even hurt to the chore.

 “What a fucking joke!” she was screaming at the wind, still hitting the walls with her feet, trashing around, like a maniac. “ _It's us against the world_ , he says. _I'll never let go of you_ , he promises! What a big. Fucking. Lie.”

 This is where you realise, dear reader, that not all adventures are happy ones, and that sometimes the hardest, saddest stories are the one you learn the most from. And I definitely learnt a lot from Ilya's stories. But most of all, she learnt a lot from on her own. Life is its own kind of adventure. Sometimes you learn a lot more from someone who lived a normal life than someone who went on grand quests.

 “I can't believe him,” she whispered, which was a huge contrast to how she bailed out the words that came after. “Fucking fell in love with some sluts? Fucking wants to _still be friend?_ What the fuck?”

 She punched a wall. I saw her cry out and didn't know if it was from the pain in her hand or the pain in her heart.

 “You don't get to promise me the fucking universe and then ask to _still be friends_ , you fucking retard!”

 It was heartbreaking, really. It was like seeing a child slowly realizing life is not as amazing as it seems, when they're being told Santa doesn't exist and that the tooth fairy is actually their mother sneaking into their room at night. As if all the wonders and mysteries of life were slowly fading away before their eyes.

 She looked so sad from where I stood. She looked lost. Her hair was all over the place, falling like mad around her face and down her shoulder, making her disappear behind all the curls. Her skin was still glowing in the light slowly fading, just as her joy was fading.

 That was her first adventure. _First heartbreak_. It is said those are the worst, though I cannot imagine her feelings. I can read her face and guess, and read her lips and imagine what she was saying. But from that window, I could not imagine what she was going through. The heart is a mystery I do not want to resolve, for it is personal and precious. I do not dare to go there.

 But Ilya was still trashing around and screaming and at this moment, I wished – we all wished – to know what kind of war was going into her mind.

 Soon enough, the tears on her face were joined by the rain in her hair, dampening everything, from her clothes to her makeup. She suddenly looked so fragile, down there in the rain, shivering slightly. But she did not seem to care as she kept shouting at nothing. I guess it is a way of getting out what you have inside.

 And that night, as I went home beside my family, I prepared myself to hear all about _that girl_ wandering late at night, probably smoking herself away, and I thought I'd keep my mouth shut, just for this once. I’d be the only one really knowing the truth. Ilya and that window were still my secret and, selfishly, I wanted to keep them all for myself a little longer.

And as I laid in my bed that night, my mind was still with Ilya and her wet, wet eyes burning holes into my soul.


End file.
